Spy vs. Spy remains a risky game

Games of corporate espionage can be as entertaining as those old Spy versus Spy comics in Mad magazine.

The plots range from the outrageously intricate to the wantonly depraved. They're carried out by enemies who look and act just like each other.

They often result in self-destruction.

Now, Boeing Co. faces allegations that it is corporate America's latest not-so-secret agent. The Justice Department and the Air Force are investigating claims that Boeing spied on competitor Lockheed Martin while vying for a huge rocket program. The case stems from charges by two employees fired by Boeing in 1999 for possessing secret Lockheed documents.

On that much, everyone agrees. The rest is a black box wrapped inside a top-secret schematic inside a for-your-eyes-only memorandum.

Boeing says it discharged Lockheed expatriate Kenneth Branch and his boss, William Erskine, in 1999 for cause. The men say Boeing fired them to conceal widespread spying at the company.

Maybe we're supposed to be shocked by all of this. We shouldn't be.

Corporate spying is big business. Trade-secret theft costs large and midsize U.S. companies more than $59 billion annually, according to a 2002 survey by ASIS International, a corporate security group.

As many as four in five big companies have corporate intelligence units, experts say. When they find something hot, it's good for business. When we find out about them, it's not.

There was the time Volkswagen lured away General Motors' king of cost reduction, Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua in 1992--lock, stock and boxloads of blueprints for a low-cost GM production plant. VW paid a $100 million fine.

Oracle was embarrassed when CEO Larry Ellison acknowledged that janitors working on Oracle's behalf had pawed through Microsoft's garbage.

Procter & Gamble had dumpster divers, too--the ones who went through the garbage of Unilever's Helene Curtis division in 2001 right here in Chicago.

If shampoo recipes and car-plant plans drive companies to such extremes, imagine what firms might do for a $2.2 billion Air Force rocket program.

The real question now--the question for Air Force and Justice Department investigators--is what Boeing did to win.

More specifically, the question is how Boeing came up with the 11 boxes of documents that it turned over to Lockheed in the last few days. And why it didn't produce them sooner.

This won't be easy snoop work.

Defense contracting is a complex business. Companies that compete on one project sometimes cooperate on another.

They raid each other for talent. They crib on one another's accomplishments.

Today's stealth technology is tomorrow's off-the-shelf spare part. Documents that are "top secret" one day become scratch paper the next.

"Everyone recognizes there are lines you can't cross," observes Michigan State University criminal justice professor David L. Carter. "The problem is that in this industry, the lines are just long shadings of gray."

The Boeing matter is a case in point.

First, we should remember that a judge dismissed the wrongful discharge case that started this mess. The charges by Branch and Erskine didn't merit a trial.

Still, there are questions.

Branch says he brought only one box of Lockheed data to Boeing. Now Boeing has to explain where it got the 10 others.